A friend urges that we accept the language of ancient Christian creeds concerning Jesus' existence before the Incarnation as eternally "God the Son." The Jehovah's Witnesses, on the other hand, say we should translate John 1:1 as "the Word was a god" and deny that God actually came as a man. What is the biblical balance here? * * * Certainly John 1 says that the Logos was divine, or God, and that it became incarnate in the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth. The Jehovah's Witnesses' "New World Translation" of the New Testament stands quite alone in claiming otherwise. On the other hand, it … [Read more...]

Did you ever look at a starry sky on a clear night and feel very small indeed? Jesse's son David did, 3,000 years ago, as he watched his father's sheep out on the hills around Bethlehem. Later he wrote about it in Psalm 8. "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" (Ps. 8:4). Measured by the heavens, we humans are tiny almost to the point of invisible. Yet we have a most significant position in the divine order. God made us to exercise caring … [Read more...]

A gracEmail subscriber asks whether Saul of Tarsus (later the Apostle Paul) ever encountered Jesus in Palestine during the years of Jesus' personal ministry. * * * We cannot know whether Paul ever saw Jesus personally on earth or not. Scholars believe that Paul (his Roman name) or Saul (his Hebrew name) was born about the same time as Jesus, although in Tarsus (in modern Turkey) far from Palestine. The New Testament first mentions Paul as an accessory to the murder of Stephen (Acts 7:58) and identifies him as a "young man." This was before Paul's conversion which likely occurred in about … [Read more...]

A gracEmail subscriber asks whether Jesus Christ was truly tempted to sin as we are, or whether he only encountered the temptation but without any accompanying enticement. * * * Although Jesus was the divine Word made flesh, in the Incarnation he truly became human and lived as one of us (Heb. 2:14). In so doing, he graciously "emptied" himself of divine prerogatives and advantages (Phil.2:7; 2 Cor. 8:9). Although God cannot be tempted by evil, in his humanity Jesus was fully "tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin" (James 1:13; Heb. 4:15). Because he did experience our … [Read more...]

A gracEmail subscriber writes: “It is too simplistic to say that Jesus was mortal since Jesus never forfeited his eternal nature -- he was and always remained the Son of God. When the agony of the cross was over, Jesus resumed the existence he had before he 'stepped down' from his spiritual divinity to undertake our atonement. Of course our finite minds cannot grasp all this.” * * * Indeed, the fullness of deity inhabited the human being we know as Jesus of Nazareth (Col. 2:9). In Jesus of Nazareth, the eternal Son of God truly became flesh and blood (Heb. 2:3-4). Jesus was fully human and, … [Read more...]

A gracEmail subscriber from New Hampshire asks the meaning of Jesus' frequent description of himself as the Son of Man. * * * Daniel described God's messianic figure as "Son of Man" 500 years before Jesus was born. As Son of Man, Jesus would eventually receive dominion, power, glory and an eternal kingdom -- for himself and for all God's people. What no one but God knew in advance, whether prophet, king, sage or heavenly angel, is that the Son of Man would first suffer and die, then rise again. The Messiah, this "man of God's own choosing" as the hymn puts it, scandalized even his inner … [Read more...]

A gracEmail subscriber from New Hampshire asks the meaning of Jesus' frequent description of himself as the Son of Man. * * * This expression, which is Jesus' favorite self-designation in Matthew and Luke, sparkles with a variety of possible meanings. Throughout the Bible, "son of man" sometimes means "human being" -- one who descends from mortal flesh (Num. 23:19; Ps. 8:4). God addresses the prophet Ezekiel this way more than 90 times. Indeed Jesus' humanity is an important New Testament theme, especially in Luke and in Hebrews, but long before Jesus the expression "Son of Man" had taken on … [Read more...]

A gracEmail subscriber asks if Jesus was God's son even before he was born in Bethlehem to the virgin Mary. * * * John's Gospel tells us that the man Jesus of Nazareth was in fact the incarnation of the divine Word ("Logos") which from the beginning was "with God" and "was God" (John 1:1-14). The Apostle Paul writes that Jesus is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15) who "existed in the form of God" but emptied himself and became a man (Phil. 2:5-7). The unknown author of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls Jesus "the radiance" of God's "glory" and "the exact representation of his … [Read more...]